Social Networking Bit

After googling my name I have found it very sad that I really don’t exist on the internet. The domain of “Peter Hays” is owned by several Ph. D’s, doctors and authors. The majority of information comes up about a Dr. Peter Hays Gries who has many published works about Chinese Nationalism and issues dealing with US-China relations. I found a few facebook references to my name, but I also try to keep my facebook page pretty clean and am pretty rigorous about keeping it that way. There was one page that was really me and it was some track and field data from high school. I had to go deep into the google search to find it but it was there, and if you don’t know what you are looking for it just looks like a bunch of names and numbers. http://www.watfxc.com/TF/State%20Page/4aboys.htm. Doing the pipl.com search, I felt a little more awkward that my name and address came up. I really have nothing to hide because I’m sure no one is out there looking for me, but I don’t feel all that comfortable with my home address out there for everybody to see.

Looking back at the searches that anyone with a computer and do, I do think I will either have to delete some of my social networking sites or rework them and edit out anything that might make me look bad as a teacher. I think it’s unfair as teachers out action might be view through a microscope by the community and held to higher standards, but I also understand the reasoning behind that. AS teachers were have taken the responsibility of teaching young people, and while our goals and lessons plans lay in a certain field, kid are smart enough and will pick up on others things we may or may not do. So it is important, and maybe no fair, that we are extra aware of the things we say and do, whether its in the classroom or not.

The whole article about social-networking and teachers was pretty interesting, although it sounded a little dated. Its amazing how short 2 years is and how fast and how much technology can change in that amount of time. What was most interesting were how many cases of teachers being fired over something seen on a social-networking site, and then having those teachers turn around and suing the school district that had fired them. To me it seems like a lose-lose situation. The school loses a teacher and loses a lawsuit, and the teacher loses their job and livelihood and most likely has a big red-flag attached to their name going forward.

Before this class started, I began to protect myself from the possible dangers of private information on social-networking sites going public. Yes I was young and dumb once (maybe I still a little dumb), and yes there are some things I wish would not have found there way onto the internet, but those things are in the past now. I can’t change them, and I’m not really sure that I would, but they don’t necessarily represent the person I am today, and so they find a private place with me and not on any social-networking sites. And then there is the notion of common sense, just don’t be stupid and protect yourself.